New smartphone-based diagnostic tools are enabling consumers to take their temperatures, diagnose simple skin conditions and much more. As advanced smartphone imaging puts more and more capabilities in patients’ hands, it’s no surprise that clinicians and numerous digital health startups are leveraging them.
As a case in point, the Department of Ophthalmology and the Innovation & Digital Health Accelerator (IDHA) at Boston Children’s Hospital have co-developed a smartphone application for patients with strabismus, or misalignment of the eyes, to securely capture and transmit photos of their eyes to their providers.
The StrabisPIX App, a HIPAA-compliant photo messaging platform piloting this month, will enable clinicians to remotely monitor and assess eye alignment before and after corrective surgery. In doing so, patients may be able to avoid unnecessary follow-up visits by interacting with their provider, remotely and on their schedule.
A mobile design challenge
Working with ophthalmologist David Hunter, MD, PhD, the IDHA development team sought to understand the complex process of capturing the nine diagnostic positions of eye gaze. While simple to conduct in clinic, this routine diagnostic test presented numerous design challenges when creating a self-guided app for a patient’s smartphone.
After testing a variety of instructional diagrams and written directions, the team designed a guided tool that takes patients through the complex workflow of posing for and capturing the nine diagnostic images: eyes up, down, left, right, straight ahead, etc.
For providers on the other end, it was important for images to be captured at a consistent distance and presented uniformly. Through the use of camera guide overlays, patients are instructed to frame their eyes within a blue box, enabling images to be captured and cropped for consistent display in the provider’s dashboard.
Read the full post on Vector: StrabisPIX: Assessing strabismus from patients’ smartphone photos
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